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I got an early start on Monday morning. Out of bed at 5:30, I shovelled in a quick breakfast, threw on some clothes, and jumped into my already-loaded truck. I was wheels-up at 6:30, bound for Prince George. When I got there, I transferred my stuff into my dad's truck, and we took off, Scamp in tow, headed north.

Our first stop was Hudson's Hope. We stumbled around town for a little bit, looking for a campground, and finally found one just off the highway. Unfortunately, the gentleman we talked to informed us that the campground was totally full. However, he advised us, since we didn't need any services, to head over to King Gething Park for the night. Turns out that King Gething park is a municipal park, but has several spots for campers to stay for the night. The spots don't have water or electrical hook-ups, but they do have picnic tables, fire pits, and there are bathroom and shower facilities on site, as well as a place to dump wastewater and pick up fresh drinking water. All this, for $15.00 per night.

After we dropped the Scamp off at the park, we headed off to W.A.C. Bennett Dam for a tour. I gotta say, if you've never seen Bennett Dam in person, you need to do that. Go and put it on your Bucket list, right now. Go on, I'll wait. OK? Good. Now, the tour starts with a short film, made in the '60s, which details the process of building the 180m tall earth dam and blasting the generating station out of the canyon wall. After the video, you take a ride on an old school bus down to the base of the dam, and then into a tunnel blasted into the side of the canyon wall. After a short drive down the access tunnel, which was used to bring in the huge turbine rotors, you disembark the bus and the tour guide takes you through the Powerhouse, where you can see the access portals for the ten generators, and if you're lucky, maybe even one of the generators themselves, if any are under repair. After that, you go into one of the manifolds, where the water goes after leaving the turbine. Each of the manifolds (there are two,) collects the water from five of the turbines and sends it out a tailrace tunnel, where the water then empties into Dinosaur Lake (the reservoir for the Peace Canyon Dam.)

After we finished the Dam Tour (har har), we cooked steaks for supper, and then wandered around Hudson's Hope for a little while. I got a couple good pictures of the Peace River, and after some ice cream, we returned to King Gething Park. While we were out, the municipal employee responsible for collecting our camping fees had dropped by. Since we weren't there, she had left a note on the door to our trailer, saying that she would be back between 8:00am and noon the next day. At that time, we didn't know if we were going to be gone or not by then, so we resolved to stop by the municipal office on the way out of town the next day and pay our fee.

The next morning, we were up early. After a scrambled egg breakfast and a quick shower, we loaded up and drove over the municipal office. We could have skipped town and avoided the fee, but hey, $15.00 was well worth what we got. (Not to mention the wildlife photos I got in the vacant lot behind the park.) We paid our fee at the counter, and headed off up Highway 29 for Fort Nelson.

I'll post photos to my gallery when I get back home, but in the meantime, you can see what I have so far up on Facebook. Just follow this link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=96166&id=590292338&l=eb79f4d738